In another class of cases a purely ideal symbolism may be present by means of a fetich which acts as a powerful stimulus without itself being felt to possess any attraction. A good illustration of this condition is furnished by a case which has been communicated to me by a medical correspondent in New Zealand.
"The patient went out to South Africa as a trooper with the contingent from New Zealand, throwing up a good position in an office to do so. He had never had any trouble as regards connection with women before going out to South Africa. While in active service at the front he sustained a nasty fall from his horse, breaking his leg. He was unconscious for four days, and was then invalided down to Cape Town. Here he rapidly got well, and his accustomed health returning to him he started having what he terms 'a good time.' He repeatedly went to brothels, but was unable to have more than a temporary erection, and no ejaculation would take place. In one of these places he was in company with a drunken trooper, who suggested that they should perform the sexual act with their boots and spurs (only) on. My patient, who was also drunk, readily assented, and to his surprise was enabled to perform the act of copulation without any difficulty at all. He has repeatedly tried since to perform the act without any spurs, but is quite unable to do so; with the spurs he has no difficulty at all in obtaining all the gratification he desires. His general health is good. His mother was an extremely nervous woman, and so is his sister. His father died when he was quite young. His only other relation in the colony is a married sister, who seems to enjoy vigorous health."
The consideration of the cases here brought forward may suffice to show that beyond those fetichisms which find their satisfaction in the contemplation of a part of the body or a garment, there is a more subtle symbolism. The foot is a center of force, an agent for exerting pressure, and thus it furnishes a point of departure not alone for the merely static sexual fetich, but for a dynamic erotic symbolization. The energy of its movements becomes a substitute for the energy of the sexual organs themselves in coitus, and exerts the same kind of fascination. The young girl (page 35) "who seemed to have a passion for treading upon things which would scrunch or yield under her foot," already possessed the germs of an erotic symbolism which, under the influence of circumstances in which she herself took an active part, developed into an adequate method of sexual gratification.[[23]] The youth who was her partner learned, in the same way, to find an erotic symbolism in all the pressure reactions of attractive feminine feet, the swaying of a carriage beneath their weight, the crushing of the flowers on which they tread, the slow rising of the grass which they have pressed. Here we have a symbolism which is altogether different from that fetichism which adores a definite object; it is a dynamic symbolism finding its gratification in the spectacle of movements which ideally recall the fundamental rhythm and pressure reactions of the sexual process.
We may trace a very similar erotic symbolism in an absolutely normal form. The fascination of clothes in the lover's eyes is no doubt a complex phenomenon, but in part it rests on the aptitudes of a woman's garments to express vaguely a dynamic symbolism which must always remain indefinite and elusive, and on that account always possess fascination. No one has so acutely described this symbolism as Herrick, often an admirable psychologist in matters of sexual attractiveness. Especially instructive in this respect are his poems, "Delight in Disorder," "Upon Julia's Clothes," and notably "Julia's Petticoat." "A sweet disorder in the dress," he tells us, "kindles in clothes a wantonness;" it is not on the garment itself, but on the character of its movement that he insists; on the "erring lace," the "winning wave" of the "tempestuous petticoat;" he speaks of the "liquefaction" of clothes, their "brave vibration each way free," and of Julia's petticoat he remarks with a more specific symbolism still,
"Sometimes 'twould pant and sigh and heave,
As if to stir it scarce had leave;
But having got it, thereupon,
'Twould make a brave expansion."
In the play of the beloved woman's garment, he sees the whole process of the central act of sex, with its repressions and expansions, and at the sight is himself ready to "fall into a swoon."
G. Stanley Hall, Adolescence, vol. ii, p. 113. It will be noted that the hand does not appear among the parts of the body which are normally of supreme interest. An interest in the hand is by no means uncommon (it may be noted, for instance, in the course of History XII in Appendix B to vol. iii of these Studies), but the hand does not possess the mystery which envelops the foot, and hand-fetichism is very much less frequent than foot-fetichism, while glove-fetichism is remarkably rare. An interesting case of hand-fetichism, scarcely reaching morbid intensity, is recorded by Binet, Etudes de Psychologie Expérimentale, pp. 13-19; and see Krafft-Ebing, Op. cit., pp. 214 et seq.